Employee Monitoring

In today's workplace environment the use of computers is viable to the success of most businesses. Computers help to get information to the various departments within the company that it needs to be quickly and efficiently with a few clicks on the computer keyboard. While computer usage is a needed form of communication within an organization some employees tend to abuse the privilege of having the internet at their fingertips. This leads to employers monitoring of computer usage by its employees. I will be discussing some of the various ethical, managerial and legal elements of monitoring employee computer usage. Let's start with the some basic definitions.

According to Webster's Illustrated Contemporary dictionary ethics can be defined as basic principles of right actions; values are things regarded as desirable, worthy or right as a belief or ideal; beliefs is the acceptance of something as real or actual; and morals pertain to the character and behavior from society's view of right or wrong. According to Bahaudin G. Mujtaba ethics can be the decision making of actions based on a set of values, morals and beliefs that a person possesses (Mujtaba, 2003). Now let's look at some ethical elements of employee monitoring.

Technology is the main focus of most employers monitoring of employees during working hours. In the article, "Ethical Implications of Employee Monitoring: What Leaders Should Consider", employee monitoring is the act of watching and monitoring employees' action during working hours using employer equipment and/or property (Raposa & Mujtaba, 2003). The internet is a wonderful and useful tool that can be misused while on company time. We as adults are always surfing the web for information that is not always work related while on the job. The first thing most computer users do upon arrival to work is to check their e-mail accounts to see if they have received any new and interesting messages. I will not even go into how we use valuable work hours on social networks such as facebook, myspace, twitter accounts and other social media outlets. Doing these things on the computer while at work is a waste of valuable time that should be used to conduct work related activities so I can see why many employers are being forced to conduct employee monitoring of computer usage while on the job which puts more on managers to keep employees accountable for their computer usage during work hours.

Managers have to be the bad guys in the monitoring of employee computer usage. In the article, "The Ethics of Monitoring Employee Internet Use in the Workplace", the author states that if the internet is free at work, why should individuals pay for the internet at home (Rajan, 2009). This is such a true statement because if we can get something free why should we pay for that same thing at home. Most individuals do not have access to the internet outside of the workplace which means we are not doing the right thing at work if we stay on the internet doing things that are not work related. This causes management to police our computer usage while on the job. If individuals spend too much time playing games on their computers instead of doing work then their work is not being finished in a timely manner. Another thing that people can do is hurry to complete their work so that they can have more time on the computer taking care of personal matters. This causes errors in our production since we probably do not take the time to proofread what we are submitting to our bosses. Managers tend to look over the finished